A stripped down version of NASA's future spaceship designed by a Nevada-based company could be ready as soon as 2013, according to the Bigelow Aerospace, the private company proposing to build it.

A Bigelow official flew to Denver in July to privately brief a White House-charted panel on the suggested design based on the planned Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which will carry passengers to and from low Earth orbit.

Such a system is crucial to Bigelow's plans for deploying Sundancer, an inflatable space station module the North Las Vegas, Nev.-based firm is building based on NASA's Transhab design. In search of the means to transport paying passengers to Sundancer, Bigelow has spent the past two years working with Denver-based United Launch Alliance to study a human-rated version of the Atlas 5 rocket.

I hope Bigelow Aerospace makes some comments to explain their recent proposal. It's a great idea and I'm glad someone proposed it to shake things up a bit! I think there are several reasons that they decided to do this.

1. Are they getting nervous about NASA's dismal progress?

2. Are they going to make more announcements about their inflatable stations? An update would be good